Another “Shot Heard Round the World”?

Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal offers the best summary this morning of the larger meaning of Brexit. Gerry, as his friends and colleagues call him, is a subdued fellow not given to hyperbole, which is why this judgment is so bracing:

Levels of dissatisfaction with leadership have reached revolutionary levels. It’s a paradox of mass modern democracy that voters feel themselves governed by rulers who “neither see nor feel nor know,” a political-business nexus that feeds on itself and promotes its own interests while mouthing platitudes at election time to keep the populace at bay. In Europe and the U.S. today, traditional political authority is worn like a scarlet letter. . .

The very idea that the state has a primary obligation to its native citizens has become unfashionable and virtually unsayable within the tightly controlled bounds of political correctness. . .

The stunning reality of Brexit needs to be understood as simply the most dramatic development yet in these trends. The British people have spoken, the first to break publicly from the institutional structures that define our modern, integrated international system.

They are very unlikely to be the last.

Over to you, Donald Trump.

Bonus Tweet of the day:

And yeah, it’s going to be an epic “Week in Pictures” tomorrow morning.